A several minutes walk away from Koga (古河) station, Ibaraki-prefecture, there is a local sake brewery called Aoki-shuzo (青木酒造). This sake brewery, called “Saka-gura (酒蔵)” in Japanese, has a long history starting from 1831, and is still providing the finest awarded-winning sake to the local community and across Japan.
I happened to visit this sakagura thanks to my high school classmate.
This is their sakagura (a building on the left)— this 5-story building was built at the end of WW2, designed for mass production of sake, and nowadays most of the equipments in the building are not used anymore. The story behind is interesting— after WW2, when this sakagura was built, it was during the era called “high economic growth” in Japan. During the time every product possible was in high demand and sake was not exception. Also, back then the only alcohol drink that available to the public was sake-- there was no beer, wine or cocktails yet. Thus, sake was very high in consumption, and no matter how they produce sake at full throttle at this sakagura, there had never been enough supply in sake in the market. But nowadays the society has changed. Actually the consumption of sake have kept decreasing until recently, when sake regained the popularity among young people as a “high-end drink”, not as a cheap drink to just get themselves drunk. Since the taste of sake in the market shifted to "quality over quantity”, sakaguras had to change the strategy of their sake production as well.
At Aoki-shuzo, since their mass-production line would decrease the quality of sake, they completely shifted to hand-manufacturing, focusing on producing high-quality sake, rather than using their mass-procution line. It’s been so successful that their sake, named Gokeiji (御慶事) series, earned so much fame receiving several awards for years. When we visited the sakagura many of their sake brands were out of stock. Isn’t it impressive?
The only season sake can be made is winter, when the outside temperature and humidity is perfect for fermenting rice. Sake is indeed a seasonal production. Toujis(杜氏) are the people who are professional craftsmen who are in charge of making sake. Typically they are seasonal workers who come to work at sakagura during winter, live in a room in sakagura and keep an eye on the quality of sake 24/7.
If I oversimplify the process of sake making, it could be divided in six steps— (1) polishing rice, (2) washing rice, (3) soaking rice into water, (4) steaming rice, (5) fermenting rice with Koji (sort of yeast), and (6) finally squeezing sake (liquid part of fermented rice).
A photo of the original building of sakagura-- it's so old and not used at all any more.
The rice-- the original material of sake.
Inside the sakagura. The rice is processed from 5th floor the ground floor. Each floor are designed for 5 steps of the sake making that I listed above! (2-6 in the list.)
At the 5th floor: Barrels for washing rice and soaking them into water.
4th floor: I think it was a big steaming pot for steaming rice.
3rd floor: Not too sure what this room was for.
2rd floor: This is an equipment for rapidly cooling down the steamed sake.
The room for fermenting.
The room where rice is bound with Koji yeast.
It tastes like-- slightly sweet chestnut?
This huge machine is for squeezing fermented rice, getting the liquid part (sake) out of rice.
A lab and the equipments to scientifically measure the quality of sake-- called Sake degree.
You might have never paid attention of the names of ranks of sake, like I used to be, but there were basically four ranks to describe the quality of sake. From the lowest to the highest: Junmai (純米酒), Tokubetsu Junmai (特別純米酒), Junmai Ginjo (純米吟醸酒), Junmai Dai-Ginjo (純米大吟醸酒). There are bunch of factors that determines the quality of sake, but the most important determinant is defined at the process of polishing rice— the more you polish the rice and discard outer outer part (and only use the core), the less part you can get and it is tastier (thus, more costly). It’s simple, right?
After the sakagura tour, it’s finally the tasting time! The one in the green bottle is their famous Gokeiji Tokubetsu Junmai, which took the 3rd place in the sake blind tasting competition and beat more than 300 competitors from all over Japan— including the most famous ones. It taste soooo good but it only costs about $15 per bottle (750ml). Those are super popular and apparently hard to get.
And this— their Gokeiji Dai-ginjo, best of the best quality sake. Oh my god, I don’t even know how to describe the taste of this beverage, but I can assure that this will change your idea about sake. The special thing about this sake is, they do not squeeze the fermented rice, but putthem into a linen bag, hang the bag and wait the sake naturally drops out of the bag-- so that is the purest, most flavorful and precious part of sake. Was around $50 per bottle if I remember correctly.
Thank you Chisa and her family!! It was a memorable experience :)
Aoki Shuzo (青木酒造):
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